Kepler telescope identifies ancient solar system

bbc.com

16 pointsSwellJoe3 comments

It would be interesting to find out whatthe relative abundance of elements is in a system like that. It's materials will have been through fewer generations of stars, so I'd expect heavier elements to be less abundant than in our system but I've no idea how much less and whether that might limit the possibility of the evolution of life.

The metallicity is listed as -0.55 [1].

Metallicity is on a logarithmic scale [2], so that's about 58% as many heavy elements as our solar system.

That seems freakishly high for a star that old. That might be the only reason it has planets at all. There aren't any heavy elements to make planets with in most stars that age.

[1] http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/kepler-444_c/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity

+1! I'm guessing there's a sweet spot for (our sort of) life– you need the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen.

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